As if the Sky Blues' task in travelling to Japan to face the newly-crowned J-League champions was not hard enough, they meet Postecoglou's Yokohama side having not played a match in 19 days.  The postponement of the Sydney derby due to wet weather and their Asian Champions League match against Shanghai last week leaves Sydney badly short of match fitness heading into this tie.

It is far from ideal preparation, admits defender Ryan McGowan, but the postponements have at least meant the squad has been able to give the Yokohama tie their full focus.

"Ideally we would have preferred to play the game when it was to be scheduled... but it’s given us the opportunity to have a few more football sessions, which has been good," McGowan said. "If we played the derby, it would have taken us a couple of days to recover and we wouldn’t have had that much time on the training ground to work on stuff we want to do, so it’s worked out quite well."

While Sydney spent more than a fortnight preparing for this match, Yokohama kicked off their Asian Champions League campaign with an impressive 2-1 win away to Korean champions, Jeonbuk, last week.

"We are under no illusions with how difficult this is going to be on Wednesday, especially with them being at home," McGowan said. "They are just a very good team, very well drilled and organised. They seem to be on the same page with everyone that is playing with them and I think that showed with their performance last week."

Postecoglou's side have paid the price for their success and were forced to spend heavily to keep their championship winning team together. They reportedly paid nearly $3 million to sign Brazilian defender Thiago Martins on a permanent basis from Palmeiras and outlaid $1.6m to make permanent Theerathon Bunmathan's loan from Muanthong.

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